Friday 28th May

Let the Satnav choose the route to Guines, the same site we spent our first night in. Refuelled at supermarket (66.3 litres after 373 miles – 5.65 miles per litre – 25.6 mpg). Followed the Satnav religiously, then Chris’ phone pinged a message. “Welcome to Tesco Belgium”. How bizarre. The road signs mysteriously changed as well. We were in Belgium, heading for Charleroi. I knew we were not far from the border in the Ardennes, but this was not making much sense to us. Chris thought I had set up the Satnav to avoid Autoroutes, but I hadn’t. I was pretty sure there was a better route in France, but having committed this far, we stuck it out. Seemed a long way though. Eventually started to get the countdown for Calais, but decided to leave at Bethune. We really got it wrong when we chose Monday as our return day. For the Tick/Worming treatment for the dog, we needed a window between 24 and 48 hours, which meant it clashed badly with the weekend. So we decided to chance finding a vet open in Bethune, rather than arriving in Calais as 5pm loomed. And find one, we did. Traffic was heavy but managed to slot the beast into a parking place within the meter zone area. Manoeuvred it fairly tight against the kerb, and walked to the vet we found. He didn’t speak a word of English (and why should he?) but we managed to make our needs clear and he carried out the treatment to the tune of 33 Euros, completing the necessary pages in the Pet Passport. When we walked back to the MH, I saw that it was awfully tight against a round traffic sign and made a mental note to manoeuvre gently as I got out of the space. I did, but not gently enough and “twang” as the posted vibrated. What had I done? It was not until we stopped later that we realised there was no mark whatsoever, the very back end of the awning assembly had clipped the aluminium sign. We arrived at a very busy Guines site. Very slick operation, quick check-in, pay our ACSI fee for two nights, and escorted by the receptionist in a golf cart at speed to our placement. Quick point out of facilities, then she was away, to return several more times with other arrivals. This must be three times busier than our arrival day.